Saudi women still have some way to go before they can claim equality, but they have every reason to celebrate their new-found right to drive. This is not their only new right, but in recent years driving has been their most public and most emblematic struggle.

Driving also brings practical and economic benefits to a car-centred nation poorly served by public transport. Women have had to make complex and expensive arrangements to make sure they get where they or their children need to go.

Saudi women are hardly the world’s most oppressed. More women than men graduate from university, and since 2015 they have had voting rights. Yet Saudi laws and customs still underpin male guardianship and treat women as children. They can’t open a bank account, gain employment, obtain a passport or marry without a male guardian’s permission. One man’s legal testimony carries the weight of two women, and after a divorce, it is hard for women to get custody of their children. The Hai’a, the religious police, can no longer arrest women for infringing tribal rules of attire, but they still have influence. Although women are not compelled to cover their faces, the religious police still hound them if they do not wear the abaya in public.

Part of the credit for the recent change must be handed to the young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a man with the influence and the power to frogmarch the nation into the twentieth century. He has challenged the formerly all-powerful clerics, even arresting them if they oppose progress.

Naturally, change cannot be attributed to one man. A broad appetite for progress has been apparent throughout Saudi society, partly because of simple demographics: too many of Saudi Arabia’s predominantly young population are no longer willing to adhere to the conservative ideas of a decrepit and out-of-touch elite.

Progress in this vast country varies by region, and even among women themselves, not all are comfortable with the changes. For example, the Washington Post reports that in the forward-thinking western coastal city of Jeddah, many women do not don their headscarves in public. However, in the more traditional capital, Riyadh, most still wear all-covering niqabs even though they are not required to.

Broader change will happen, but at a pace that Saudi citizens find comfortable. While they wait for more, Saudi women can at least hit the road, and they are doing so. Some have suggested that having women drivers may soften Saudi Arabia’s notoriously macho road culture: around 20 people die on the roads every day in a country with around the same population as Canada. That remains to be seen. In the meantime, smiling women can be seen at the wheel on their way to have coffee with friends. That in itself is progress, but the real test will be dismantling the pervasive male guardianship.

Push can lead to counter-push, but if the change is gradual and moderate enough, hopefully, the extreme conservatives can be sidelined, a backlash can be avoided and in a few years, Saudi women will be free to go wherever their aspirations lead them.

Last month at the French Grand Prix, Saudi woman Aseel Al Hamad took a Formula 1 Renault for a demo lap. What greater symbol can there be of a woman breaking male stereotypes?

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